Burn Fat Like A Warrior

At the beginning of this interview series, I introduced Martin Rooney to you. The man with SUPER HIGH ENERGY and super busy. To find out his secret, I would recommend jumping back to part 6 of this expert interview series.

Craig: Let’s talk nutrition. You said there can’t be any junk in the house. That’s like saying eat clean because the definition of junk and eat clean these days, there are so many different nutrition styles. What is the nutrition program that goes with Warrior Cardio?

Martin: In the book, and it’s pretty interesting you say that. Where John Barardi and I got together and this is a guy who not only do I trust with my nutrition, but I believe he’s probably forgotten more about nutrition that I’ll ever know.

We got together and I came up with this really interesting idea. We were up in Montreal, we saw each other and I said, “John, I have an idea.”

He said, “What is it?”

I said, “You know what? When I work with my highest level athletes, I notice that they only have about 20 things in their refrigerator and their cupboards. It’s pretty barren, and there are about 20 things.”

He said, “Okay, what’s your point?”

I said, “Well, my next level athlete that’s not so good, a little less high level, that guy has about 40 things.”

He said, “Okay, what’s your point?”

I said, “Well then, the next person who’s just a weekend warrior, they have about 80 things. Some of them are healthy, some of them really aren’t so healthy. Then the regular Joe, the regular person, they have about 150 things in their cupboards and none of them are good for them.”

I said, “John, the point is what’s the 20, man? What is the 20? Couldn’t we make it any easier for people where we say, ‘Here’s the 20 things. Make the list and go and buy the list. When you run out, go and buy more.’”

We battled back and forth for months to create this list and we called it the Warrior 20. It’s featured in Warrior Cardio and so many people have written in and they’re following this thing and it’s changing their life. If you really think about it, most people’s cupboards are filled with cereals and canned goods and cookies and chips and junk. The fridge has ice cream.

It’s just a bunch of crap, and then you open their produce drawer and there’s nothing. Where are the lean meats? There are none. Where are the good whole grains? None. You just realize people are buying stuff that on a box says it’s good, but it’s all junk. That’s what they eat all day long.

We’ve created a list, everybody can check it out at Warrior Cardio if they want. I don’t think it could be any simpler, and the cool part is everything on that list everybody is going to say, “Yeah, I know I should be eating it. I just don’t do it.” The challenge becomes can people do that?

Craig: Absolutely. What about in the Rooney house. Is there stuff for the kids? How does Mr. Rooney avoid that?

Martin: I’ll definitely say, when you’re raising girls, I don’t know what has happened but there is this kind of unwritten girl rule that every girl needs a tiny little scoop of ice cream every night before they go to bed or they turn into vampires or something. I don’t know what it is, but I will say that with the kids, people will probably laugh but I’m making protein pancakes in the morning and we have real maple syrup that’s done on a farm that this buddy of mine gets me. We eat organic eggs, so the kids eat relatively healthy.

At school I’m not exactly sure what they’re getting because sometimes they like to buy their lunch, but the school has made an effort to be a lot more healthy, too.

At dinners, we cook healthy meals where it’s kind of like there’s always going to be some form of lean meat and vegetable and they have to eat it or they’re not doing their thing. I will say too, the kids are going to have their chips and they’re going to have their cereal and they’re going to eat a little bit of their ice cream or something. The way I look at is I never want to scare them away from food or scare them to death.

If anybody has seen my kids, my kids are really lean. If people go to the YouTube site, you’re going to see my nine year old banging out 15 chin-ups. She was a two time all American in track and field last year.

I feel not only am I doing it from my own standpoint, but I feel like I’m doing a pretty good job as a parent as well, whereas I’ve definitely seen that the fastest growing demographic of obesity is with kids. There’s no fear of that in my house, yet my kids understand food and they’re able to control themselves and they know what is good or bad. If I can get them to do the right thing, they’re the ones who are most important to me.

Craig: That’s really awesome. How old did you say your oldest daughter is?Martin: She’s 10 now, but the video that we have of where she bangs out 15 chins when she was nine. She’s done some pretty amazing stuff. She was a two time all American last year in track and field. We get almost more requests for her to do more videos than me. She’s stealing the show.

Craig: That is a tough, tough job to steal the show from you, good sir.

We have covered pretty much the gauntlet of everything here. The training, the warm up, the recovery, the nutrition, and the high energy, of course. Is there any other message that you want to tell people about right now or say that you’re going to cover in more detail when we meet up onstage in June in San Diego?

Martin: I think not only did we cover a lot of stuff, I think there’s a tremendous amount of value in this call for a lot of people. I hope everybody shares it and got something from the info.

Maybe the last thing I’ll leave everybody with, that’s going to be the piece we started with again about the energy. What I always challenge everybody is when you were going to school you were probably in school. You went to class, you did your stuff, you did your thing, but you just weren’t passionate about it. You weren’t into school.

You probably weren’t asking the questions after class, you weren’t doing all your homework on time, you weren’t studying like mad. As a result, you didn’t get probably straight As.

My challenge to everybody, and hopefully we see everybody out there in San Diego. My challenge is you can’t be in fitness. If you’re going to be in fitness, we don’t need you because there’s a war going on and we have to get people healthier. The way we’re going to do that is we need people into fitness. We need people on fire.

What I’m going to show everybody in June is that it is as easy to be on fire and it’s actually more energizing than it is to be just laid back or lame or giving up on people.

Maybe this is the way to end the call. That question for yourself, and this is something you have to look in the mirror and ask, in this industry are you in it or are you into it? If you’re not into it, you have to start acting like you are. If you really aren’t and it’s not going to work, then you need to find the industry that you need to be in.

Right now we need more people into it, and that’s exactly what I’m going to be firing people up about when we hit San Diego in June.

Craig: Man, that is fantastic. You have me fired up. I know I’m going to be there. I know a lot of excited people are going to be there. We’re really going to get our butts kicked when we do some boot camp workouts outside.

Mr. Rooney, thank you very much. That is really fantastic. Again, where can people find more information? What website should they go to?

Martin: If you like what you heard, check out my blog and a ton of the free information on TrainingForWarriors.com. We’re always doing new posts and everything else on the Training for Warriors Facebook page. We have over 10,000 people on there right now, too.

I’m always tweeting out on MartinRooney1 on Twitter, and hit me up. Tell me what everybody thought about this call and if it fired you up. Hopefully I can continue to do that moving forward.

That’s fantastic. Everybody again, Martin will be our main speaker at our third Turbulence Training summit ever in June. He’ll be there on the 22nd, the Saturday, in San Diego and it’s going to be fantastic.

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Craig Ballantyne is the author of The Perfect Day Formula: How to Own the Day and Control Your Life. Craig has been a contributor to Men's Health magazine for over 17 years. Today he teaches his gift to high-performing entrepreneurs how to squeeze more out of their days, increase their income, and make more quality time for their families in his Perfect Life Workshop and Work-Life Mastery programs. Craig used his own advice to overcome crippling anxiety attacks in 2006, and he'll teach you his 5 Pillars of Success so you can increase your income, decrease your work time, and live the life of your dreams. Learn more about Craig at craigballantyne.com

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